The Daily Frame

Curatorial assistant Francesca Sidhu stands beside Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, “Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani” (“The Lady with an Ermine”), which forms part of the “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan” exhibition at the National Gallery in London.

The exhibition focuses on da Vinci’s formative years as a court painter in the 1480s and 1490s and brings together, for the first time, nine of his 15 surviving paintings, as well as dozens of drawings. It runs from Wednesday until Feb. 5, 2012, and is expected to draw record crowds.

Enjoy this great interactive by the BBC about how the exhibition came to be. According to the National Gallery, the exhibition took more than five years to assemble and is “the most complete display of Leonardo da Vinci’s rare surviving paintings ever held.”